This book tackles the spatial dimension of Europeanization in the Balkans, by focusing on cities, inter-urban networks, and urban epistemic communities. Exploring the participation of urban actors in inter-urban networks, it employs a new mixed-method framework to track the circulation of European urban knowledge and policies, and their impact in the Balkans.The author explores discourses, practices, and their interpretation, to show how participation in European urban networks continuously reshapes Balkan Cities urban trajectories with contradictory and variegated consequences. Analysis of 18 European inter-urban networks along with expert interviews with their members, helps readers visualize the relationships between Balkans cities and gives insight into their perceptions. This book will be of interest to both scholars of urban studies and Southeast European Studies scholars, as well as anyone interested in the Europeanization of the Balkans and its cities.
This book tackles the spatial dimension of Europeanization in the Balkans, by focusing on cities, inter-urban networks, and urban epistemic communities.
Introduction
1. Europeanization as a Context of Social Action
2. Cities
in the European Context
3. Urban Networks and their Role in Europeanization
4. Balkans Cities in the European Urban Networks: Affiliation Network
Analysis and Visualizations
5. Rethinking the European City from a Southeast
European Perspective
6. Urban Epistemic Communities and Europeanization in
Balkans
7. European Urban Networks as Aspirational Horizon of Europeanization
in the Balkans
8. European Urban Networks: Between Aspiration, Performativity
and Autocratic Cooptation
Ana Pajvani-Cizelj is an urban sociologist specializing in global urban studies, with a particular interest in the interplay between cities and broader political processes such as Europeanisation and (de)democratisation. She is currently a senior scientist at the Department for European Policy and the Study of Democracy at Danube University Krems, Austria. Previously, she was a Marie Skodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad.
